Dufner Heighes Transforms a Historic House in Pelham, New York into a Modern Family Home

Flip back a page, please. Now, kick up your feet, relax—here, have a cocktail—and observe this intriguing wood-paneled room: the resolutely leafy view, that groovy triangular window, the serene quiet, the vintage-heavy furniture scheme. Bet you think this is the living room of some cozy ’70’s-mod cabin on a remote rural plot, right? Well, surprise! In fact, this is the second-floor sitting room of a painstakingly preserved century-old Edwardian-style manse within shouting distance (although please don’t; the baby’s sleeping) of the Bronx.

Dufner Heighes was the firm tasked with future-proofing the historic Pelham, New York, house for a growing family. The 7,100-square-foot dwelling has an intriguing back story. Previous owners include the island nation of Barbados, which used it as an embassy, and a Coca-Cola executive who frequently hosted President Eisenhower there back in the 1950s. Another head of state, George Washington, reportedly stayed on the property, too, in a structure that once stood on this abode’s exact footprint. That provenance piqued the interest of Erica Holborn, CEO of Sandow Design Group (Interior Design’s parent company) and a self-professed real-estate enthusiast. “I’m a house-with-a-story person,” she admits.

When Holborn and her husband, Andrew, first saw the property listing, they deemed the eight-bedroom too big for their needs. Fast forward a year later. Their Dufner Heighes–designed Sutton Place apartment was getting a bit too snug for their expanding family (especially with WFH in the mix), and their upstate getaway, a 1970’s A-frame designed by Frank Lloyd Wright protégés, was too far from the city for full-time residency. Plus, the Holborns got an offer on the latter that they couldn’t refuse. So when the price dropped on the Pelham place around the same time, they finally took a look—and were sold.

Among the structure’s many attributes was that it had been pristinely restored, from the oak millwork to the original hardware. “It was a perfect situation, because the previous owners had updated a few things, like the kitchen, but restored everything else—stripping layers of paint off moldings and all that stuff no one wants to deal with,” notes Daniel Heighes Wismer, firm copartner with Greg Dufner. In short, it was practically turnkey. Early site visits suggested the project would be primarily decorative and cosmetic: reupholstering some existing furnishings, buying new items to fill in a few gaps, replacing antique light fixtures with more modern designs, updating cabinetry, hanging artwork. Midway through planning the new kitchen, however, it became apparent the current footprint was underscaled for the size of the house and had an awkward, dinky island unsuited to cooking and dining. “During one of our meetings with the team from Bilotta, with whom we were designing the kitchen,” Wismer recalls, “someone questioned whether we could tear down a wall to annex the adjoining butler’s pantry—and that changed everything,” necessitating plumbing and electrical rerouting plus new structural steel. “My dream has always been to have a butler’s pantry,” Holborn sighs. “And then I finally buy a house with one—and promptly take it out!”

The monthslong renovation was well worth it. The new scheme is much brighter and airier, with a long Arabescato Corchia marble island that seats four, plus a window-wrapped breakfast nook. Dufner Heighes deployed two patterns of Artistic Tile terrazzo flooring, one incorporating marble chips, to create area rug–like accents that delineate spatial zones. Shaker-style cabinetry is simpatico with the period architecture yet modern enough to suit the décor. The same flooring and cabinetry also extend into an adjacent space, a former family room that now serves as a storage-packed mudroom.

The reinvention of a living space as service-oriented hub made sense, given the floorplan already offered a generous number of hangout areas, including the ground-floor salon and contiguous sunroom, a second-floor playroom for two-year-old Marlowe and baby Bodhi, a sitting room off the primary suite, and the family and game rooms that anchor the daylit basement level. “The challenge,” Dufner says, “was how to make each living space feel like it had a unique function and purpose.” Seating in particular was selected with specific activities and postures in mind. Thus the salon’s more upright Bob sectional, its firm, snakelike form perfect for perching with a glass of wine; the sunroom’s more lounge-y Bouroullec Brothers Ploum sofa, a holdover from the upstate house (albeit newly reupholstered); and the super deep, nap-conducive sofa in the family room, where TV viewing occurs.

Though the house has a traditional layout, with discrete rooms, they open graciously onto each other, and curating sight lines was particularly important. Many features were considered holistically so they would work together from room to room. On the first floor, for instance, “there are points where you can see the ceiling fixtures in the sunroom, living room, entry hall, and the dining room all at once,” Wismer explains. “So the lighting we specified all needed to work within their respective rooms and also as a cohesive group.” Furniture and other accents were chosen and placed similarly, he adds. “There was a balancing of where we could go a little wild and where something had to be toned down so it wouldn’t get too heavy or layered.”

Speaking of going a little wild, check out the dining room wallpaper. The pattern, a trippy graphic confection in riotous hues, tents the room, extending up from crisp wainscoting lacquered a mercurial green-gray color. The op art patterning is the perfect jazz riff on the abode’s 1914 bones. “The contrast between historic and modern is just so great,” says Wismer. A sentiment that summarizes the project top to bottom.

knoll: sofa

dunbar: side table

design for macha: ceiling fixture

through noguchi shop: floor lamp

garrett leather: armchair shearling

kvadrat: side chair fabric

blå station through scandinavian spaces: sofa

house of finn juhl: chairs

Gubi: coffee table

aronson’s: rug

bd barcelona through ddc: green side table.

Fredericia: daybed

lawson-fenning: vessels

bilotta: cabinetry

Artistic Tile: flooring

seungjin yang through the future perfect: pink stool

Blu Dot: yellow ottoman

through noguchi shop: pendant

Louis Poulsen: pendants

voutsa: wallpaper

e15 through stillfried wien: table

Carl Hansen & Son: chairs

iittala through fiskars group: glass birds

bd barcelona through ddc: credenza

aronson’s: rug

mitchell gold + bob williams: sofa

aronson’s: rug

Carl Hansen & Son: Lounge

Blu Dot: side table

through john derian: artwork

ligne roset: sofa

iacoli: coffee table

CB2: side table

Artistic Tile: flooring, counters

bilotta: cabinetry

Carl Hansen & Son: chairs, stools

e15 through stillfried wien: table

Louis Poulsen: pendants

casey johnson studio: custom table

Blu Dot: ottoman

through john derian: flowers

aj madison: appliances

lee jofa: wallpaper

through design within reach: rocking chair

dunbar: sofa

house of finn juhl: coffee table

floyd: shelving

stokke: crib

rejuvenation: ceiling fixture

nessen lighting: gold lamp

&tradition: coffee table, ottoman

Carl Hansen & Son: green lounge chair

mitchell gold + bob williams: sofa

aronson’s: rug

kvadrat: mama bear chair fabric

zak & fox: club chair fabric

design for macha: ceiling fixture

michael robbins: bench

lawson-fenning: bed

once milano: quilt

aronson’s: rug

flavor paper: wallpaper

Gubi: mirror

visual comfort through circa lighting: table lamps (sitting room, dining room, family room, bedroom); ceiling pendant (living room, dining room, foyer); floor lamps (living room, nursery); reading lamp (living room)

through furniture from scandinavia: items from fredericia, house of finn juhl, gubi, carl hansen & sØn, louis poulsen, and &tradition

A New Hospitality Landmark by Kelly Wearstler and Omgivning Emerges in Los Angeles

2022 Best of Year Winner for Domestic Hotel Transformation

The fourth in the quartet, the Downtown L.A. Proper is Kelly Wearstler’s most complex and layered hotel for the brand yet. “Since the 13-story building is historic, it was important to keep its integrity, its original and odd architectural details,” the acclaimed designer begins. That includes an existing basketball court on the sixth floor and an indoor pool on the seventh. (More on those later.) The interiors of the four-year project, a standout on the city’s gentrifying Broadway cor­ridor, are a multicultural visual feast, a mashup of everything Wearstler is known for and loves: color and pattern; vintage finds mixed with custom pieces; art, both sourced and commissioned; and tiles galore, some 100 different types. Equally rich is the structure’s backstory leading to its Historic-Cultural Monument designation.

Designed by Curlett & Beelman, the California Renaissance Revival building was completed in 1926 as the Commercial Club, a private Old Hollywood–style entity that counted Cecil B. DeMille among its members. In the ’40’s and ’50’s, it transitioned into a hotel, before becoming a 126-room YWCA in 1965. When Wearstler and collaborating architecture firm Omgivning took it on, it had been vacant for 10 years.

Omgivning is an L.A. firm specializing in adaptive reuse, its founder and principal Karin Liljegren naming the firm after the Swedish word that roughly translates to “the way a space feels,” she says. “Considering its immense scale, the Proper was a creative and space-planning challenge that utilized every square inch of the building,” Omgivning director of hospitality projects Morgan Sykes Jaybush states. “Even with the massiveness of the project, we took special care with the details, salvaging as many original pieces as possible, from brass door hardware with Commercial Club initials to ornate Babylonian-style plaster corbels.”

For Wearstler, initial inspiration came from another landmark, the Herald Examiner building across the street, built by architect Julia Morgan for William Randolph Hearst in 1913. “I was looking out the window and seeing the iconic structure, with its tile motifs at the top,” she recalls. “The Proper Hospitality brand is about being fiercely local.” But she went farther afield, too. The bas-relief on the Curlett & Beelman facade shows Spanish, Mexican, and Native American references. All these influences, interpreted with poetic license, now pervade the 115,000- square-foot interior of the Downtown L.A. Proper.

They are visible right at the entry. Wearstler commissioned two area artists to make it a showstopping setting. Painter Abel Macias, whose playful and bold color aesthetic draws upon his Mexican heritage, spent nearly two months on scaffolding covering the walls and the vaulted ceiling with his fantastical mural of flora and fauna, heavy on ocher and dusty-rose tones that Wearstler would adopt as the hotel’s pervasive signature colors. One section of the installation is anchored by a mysterious ebony form: It’s the reception desk fashioned from textured clay tiles by ceramicist Morgan Peck. Elsewhere in the lobby is original millwork restored by Omgivning, furniture by Wearstler’s studio, and various vintage pieces, including a circa 1930’s artwork with what the designer calls a “Cubist-Frida Kahlo feeling.”

Caldo Verde, the adjacent restaurant, further beckons visitors. It’s accessed through a stained-glass partition by another L.A. artisan, Judson Studios. Once inside, there is the focal bar, which Wearstler and Omgivning conceived “to be like its own little building,” framed in ribbed oak and tile, along with Mexican modernist, Moorish, and Portuguese design notes, to reflect the cuisine by James Beard Award–winning chef Suzanne Goin, who with restaurateur Caroline Styne are stars of the city’s culinary landscape and oversee the project’s F+B program. “While the hotel’s design was inspired by the community, it is also very much for the community, for those familiar with the city and this wonderfully talented pair,” Wearstler says of her first-time collaborators.

Guest rooms now number 147, 10 of which are suites. That includes the Proper Pool suite, a 2,800-square-foot extravaganza Wearstler and Omgivning built around the aforementioned indoor pool, now smack in the middle of the living room and overlooked by a ceramic mural composed of abstracted tire treads and cacti—“vernaculars of commuting in Los Angeles,” is how local sculptor Ben Medansky describes his installation. “As soon as we discovered that the YWCA’s pool originally shared a floor plate with the guest rooms, we knew it would be a great to transform it into one large suite, allowing for an unforgettable experience,” Wearstler notes.

The same goes for the Proper Basketball Court suite, a 1,400-square-foot space with an 18-foot ceiling that had contained the YWCA’s basketball court. “I saw the ceiling height as an opportunity to create an impactful moment,” Wearstler explains. Walls finished in a limewash-like textured paint are divided into super-size blocks of charcoal, ecru, moss, and smoky blue that simultaneously emphasize the soaring ceiling and temper its scale. Contrasting patterns in the furniture also contribute to the suite’s intimate feel.

As for the rest, each accommodation is quasi unique, adorned with vintage accessories, paintings, and an organic color palette, “warm tones honoring the building’s rich history,” Wearstler says. In gallery-esque fashion, the art, much of which she sourced from Europe and Mexico as well as such domestic locales as Round Top in Texas, hangs not only on guest-room walls but also in corridors, making them, too, places to pause and delight the eye. Rugs have Turkish and Moroccan roots—either aged or made to appear so. Textiles are specially developed, and many furnishings are Wearstler’s own design.

The Proper rooftop, a split-level urban oasis, is arrayed with vignettes. The firepit is one primal gathering post, the raised pool another, and Cara Cara, for all-day bites and cocktails, yet another. A virtual forest of succulents and greenery articulates semiprivate areas, almost like rooms. Come for sunlight, stay for sunset, carry-on through evening, all the while taking in the panoramic cityscape. L.A.—and its creative set—never looked so good.

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Omgivning: Jonathan Giffin; Dominic Sosinski; Brad Mallette; Alex Prictoe; Chris Asuncion; Yukie Takeshi; Pablo Patiño; Nikki Brown; Joel Chappo

Kelly Wearstler: Luke Kielion; Ryder Chanatry

historic consultants: preservation consultant

The Ruzika Company: lighting consultant

Studio-MLA: landscape architect

nabih youssef structural engineers: structural engineer

henderson engineers: mep

KPFF: civil engineer

wb powell: woodwork

kustanovich construction consultants: construction manager

Kelly Wearstler: credenza (lobby), sofa (court suite)

isa isa floral: flowers

judson studios: partition (restaurant)

PELLE: pendant fixture (lobby)

portola paints & glazes: textured paint (court suite)

lawson-fenning: round side table

Ethimo: chaise longues (roof)

jamal’s rug collection: vintage rugs

Dunn-Edwards Paints; Farrow & Ball: paint

inner gardens: plants